The Afghan 'Dead Goat Scam'

Women at a cemetery in Kabul, picture by Reuters' Ahmad Masood

Afghan Honor And Empty Graves -- Strategy Page

June 25, 2013: Afghanistan is undergoing a painful culture clash. This is partly the result of more statistics being collected nationwide. This includes data on crimes, which until quite recently were never collected on a national basis. Some of these stats are quite disturbing to Westerners. Take, for example, “honor killings”. This is an ancient custom whereby a woman perceived as acting in a way that reflects badly on the family may be killed by a male relative to maintain the family “honor”. Thus women suspected of adultery or refusing to marry the man her parents have selected for her (or marrying someone they did not select) or getting raped are automatically at risk of being murdered to redeem family honor. In Afghanistan there were records of 240 women killed for “honor” in the past two years. There were believed to be more, whose fate was kept quiet (which is another part of the honor angle). There were also records of 160 rapes in that same two year period. Some of these overlapped with honor killing incidents. Rape victims who were not murdered to preserve honor are often prosecuted for unseemly behavior. It’s believed there were more than 160 cases of rape because this sort of thing is usually kept quiet (if only because more than a third of the time male relatives are the rapists).

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My Comment: There is a reason why Afghanistan has been labeled as one of the most corrupt countries in the world.